Native SATA Drives Include Hot-Plug for Midline and Nearline Applications


Dubai, UAE, 22 June 2004─Maxtor Corporation (NYSE: MXO) announced today its new high-capacity, native SATA MaXLine III hard drives. The third-generation MaXLine drives feature the industry’s first 16MB buffer and are designed to the enterprise standard of 1 million hour mean time to failure (MTTF). With new SATA II features including native command queuing (NCQ), capacity up to 300GB, 7200 RPM speed and Maxtor® MaxCommand™ technology, the drives are ideally suited to provide cost-effective storage for midline and nearline applications, such as fixed-content storage and disk-to-disk back up. 
 
Maxtor MaxCommand technology encompasses Maxtor’s unique firmware, integrated SATA technology, 16MB buffer and exclusive dual processor for intelligently and efficiently managing the drive’s workload.
 
“Applications that require SATA hard drives in the enterprise are growing as corporations need to deal with a myriad of regulations that require that data be kept longer for compliance purposes,” said Brian Garrett at the Enterprise Storage Group. “Maxtor’s MaXLine III drives combine capacity, performance and cost efficiency to meet the requirements of these midline applications. The drive’s SATA II feature set with native command queuing allows applications to do more in parallel for increased performance.”
 
The MaXLine III drive’s new SATA II features bring new performance and flexibility to network storage environments. These features are an extension of the SATA 1.0 specification and include: NCQ, staggered spin up, hot-plug and, asynchronous signal recovery. NCQ significantly enhances the drive’s performance, enabling multi-threaded performance and allowing the drive to reorder and efficiently execute up to 32 commands for greater data throughput and maximum system performance.
 
MaXLine III drives also feature hot-plug functionality, providing customers using RAID or other large storage arrays with better serviceability and flexibility when a SATA drive needs to be added or upgraded while the system is running. Reliability improvements include staggered spin up, which minimizes the power surge when a subsystem powers up.  
 
“Advances in SATA technology and our manufacturing processes allow us to provide customers with additional value in our MaXLine family of premium SATA hard drives,” said Mike Williams, vice president of product marketing at Maxtor. “Designed specifically for enterprise applications, Maxtor MaXLine drives continue to be the brand of choice for midline and nearline applications, meeting the capacity and cost requirements of our customers.” 
 
Because SATA hard drives can be implemented in a Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) architecture, MaXLine drives will be able to be integrated with SAS drives in a single SAS system. This Serial in a Box™ storage architecture provides flexibility and scalability in one enclosure that can serve as a universal building block for constructing a data center’s storage infrastructure. High-capacity MaXLine drives can be used for applications requiring the maximum capacity at the best cost and installed together with performance-oriented SAS drives for high transactional performance, allowing customers to maximize their total cost of ownership.
 
Maxtor’s MaXLine III drives feature a three-platter design, offering capacities of 250GB and 300GB. SATA models are currently available for qualification testing and will begin shipping in volume next quarter. Availability of ATA/133 models will follow. MaXLine III drives include a three-year limited warranty.
 
-Ends-
 
About Maxtor
Maxtor Corporation (www.maxtor.com) is one of the world’s leading suppliers of hard disk drives and data storage solutions. The company has an expansive line of storage products for desktop computers, storage systems, high-performance Intel-based servers, and consumer electronics. Maxtor has a reputation as a proven market leader, built by consistently providing high-quality products and service and support for its customers. Maxtor and its products can be found at www.maxtor.com or by calling toll-free (800) 2-MAXTOR. Maxtor is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MXO.
 
Note: Maxtor and the stylized Maxtor logo are registered trademarks, and MaXLine, MaxCommand and Serial in a Box are trademarks of Maxtor Corporation.  All other trademarks are properties of their respective owners.
 
For purposes of measuring drive storage capacity, GB means 1 billion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment. MTTF refers to the estimated mean time to failure and is calculated based upon statistical testing of a panel of Maxtor MaXLine III hard disk drives.
 
This announcement relating to Maxtor may contain forward-looking statements concerning future technology, products incorporating that technology, and Maxtor’s execution. These statements are based on current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties which could materially affect the company’s results, including, but not limited to, market demand for hard disk drives, integration of the company’s products with products produced by others, the company’s ability to execute future production ramps and utilize manufacturing assets efficiently, pricing, competition, and the significant uncertainty of market acceptance of new products and technologies.  These and other risk factors are contained in documents that the company files with the SEC, including the Form 10-K for fiscal 2003 and its recent 10-Qs.  Maxtor is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any responsibility to update or alter, its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
 

© Press Release 2004